About us

Leander Club is recognised the world over for its extraordinary achievements, having won more Olympic and World championship gold medals than any other club, and home to rowing heroes and to the champions of tomorrow.

Leander’s members enjoy a very socially active club that encourages good fellowship, celebrates success and values its heritage, stretching back to its formation in 1818.

Event Diary

Corporate

Commercial partners engage with Leander Club and our International and Academy athletes for brand and relationship-building purposes.

As our story to 2018 and Leander’s Bicentenary unfolds, partners and other corporate clients are enjoying opportunities to entertain customers at Henley Royal Regatta and campaign events, or to row with our athletes.

Not a Member?

Over the past 50 years Leander has steadily changed its membership from being almost exclusively Oxbridge to now being a Club with membership drawn from clubs and universities from all over the UK and from around the world. Women first became Full Members of the Club in 1997 and are now a fully integrated part of the Club

Media

Leander delivers rowing athletes for Team GB. Twelve Leander athletes won medals in Rio (out of GB’s total of 26), retaining GB’s position at the top of the rowing medal table and bringing Leander’s total Olympic medal tally to 123.

The Club’s successes at both GB and Academy levels, together with various ongoing campaign events, deliver news stories throughout the year.

International Coach Outreach

As a curtain-raiser to its bicentenary celebrations next year Leander Club has invited a coach from Sri Lanka to witness its high-performance programme in action, learning skills that he can put to practical use in his own country, which is seeking to establish itself as a leading rowing nation in Asia.

Kushal Abhayaratne will arrive on Monday to spend a week with Leander’s coaching team. During his time in Henley he will shadow Director of Rowing Mark Banks, monitoring the training programme of the club’s elite athletes in their final preparation for the British Senior Championships in Nottingham (October 21-22).

The initiative is the result of a partnership between Leander Club, FISA (the World Rowing Federation), and British Rowing.

Abhayaratne was chosen from several international candidates according to key criteria: he comes from a Commonwealth nation which is steadily making its presence felt on the international rowing scene; he has already been exposed to national and continental competition; and he is a senior coach in the Sri Lankan system, recognized through an Olympic Solidarity Project as being a leading coach by FISA experts.

SCHEDULE

In order to get a better perspective of the Leander programme Abhayaratne will also visit other local rowing clubs as well as the River and Rowing Museum, the GB Training Lake in Caversham, and the Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre.

Abhayaratne will learn about the development of training plans at elite level, as well as details of strength and conditioning techniques, gearing for different conditions, and load targets for specific athletes and training sessions.

WHAT THEY SAY…

“We are very keen to make this work for Kushal, as well as British Rowing and FISA, who have all worked so hard to help bring this plan into fruition” said Leander’s Director of Rowing, Mark Banks.

“It’s a first step for all of us, but something we would like to repeat in the future assuming all goes well” he added.

“This is the first time a club has ever done this – Leander has a very good structure and Kushal has shown himself to be very serious” said Sheila Stephens-Desbans, Development Director of FISA, the World Rowing Federation.

Stephens-Desbans is responsible for the management and administration of FISA’s development programme, international training camps and coaching academy.

“Kushal was very engaged and we saw that he and his country hadd really demonstrated that they wanted to bridge the gap with the high performance side in Asia” she added.

“The ambitious and professional coaching team has inspired and enabled many promising athletes to achieve their dreams by bringing together talent from across the country” said Annamarie Phelps, Chairman of British Rowing.